Making Right Choices is the Key to Happiness
We live in the world created by our own choices. Those choices can have a minor, profound, even a life-changing effect on our lives.
The summer I left school, I got a job as an intern in a real estate office. One day, I found myself driving a man to view a house surrounded by orchards in the Kent countryside. That morning, I had dressed in black heels, a cream silk blouse and a dark suit with a tight skirt.
The skirt rose up my thighs as I was driving, making my cheeks bloom pink in embarrassment. I was damp inside the suit, which was too heavy for the summer, and I snapped the heel off my shoe on the crazy-paving path leading to the house.
The choices I had made that morning left me feeling hot, silly and immature. Those choices had another, more significant effect, which I will come to later.
Generally, choosing what you are going to wear only affects ourselves. But each day, we make choices that effect others: are we going to break the speed limit driving, endangering lives; leave a broken refrigerator in the street when nobody’s looking; speak loudly on our iPhone while on the bus or in the doctor’s waiting room? Are we going to give a dollar to the beggar or cross the street?
We become the person we are by making choices. Every time we reach a crossroad and go left rather than right, the person who sets out one way becomes different from that other person – our shadow, perhaps – who chose to go the other. We will cross different frontiers, meet different barriers to overcome, enjoy and recoil from completely different experiences.
As we move along each new path, on the way we meet different people who will affect us and encourage us in different ways to that person we would have become had we chosen to go in the opposite direction. We are imbued with certain qualities and characteristics, but destiny is not a map we are obliged to follow. We become who we are and achieve what we are capable of through the choices we make.
Choices for Today
Albert Camus (one of my favourite writers) said: Life is a sum of all your choices, and then adds: So, what are you doing today?
The suit and silk blouse I wore that day to the real estate office wasn’t chosen by me. It was inspired by Maggie Gyllenhaal from the movie Secretary, which had just reached the cinema in Canterbury. I was waiting for the results of my pre-university exams and desperate at eighteen, after years at an all-girl’s boarding school, to be free to make my own choices.
Secretary (directed by Steven Shainberg, based on a short story by Mary Gaitskill) explores the relationship between Lee Holloway, a submissive, emotionally-awkward secretary (Maggie Gyllenhaal) and E. Edward Grey, her dominant boss, (James Spader).
With scenes of spanking and BDSM that are erotic but subtle, I identified so completely with the secretary, I chose in my first job to dress as she dressed and, like her, I allowed myself to be dominated by the man I drove that day into the Kent countryside to view a house – which he never bought.
I set out on a path without regret and the experience allowed me to write about that day in my novel Katie in Love with an authenticity that brings the sequence to life. Did I carry on down the road Lee Holloway was on in Secretary? No, I began to think for myself, reached the crossroad and chose another path.
As Lao-tzu put it: If you do not change direction you may end up where you are heading.
Now read Katie in Love – you’ll love it, promise.
‘… beautifully written literary jewel with likeable characters and a plot that held me transfixed to the pages.’
Katie Boyd, troubled by modern times and modern love, finds she is falling for the volunteer doctor Tom Bridge and fights the feeling through a winter of reflection on her past, the state of the world and the future with its varying potentials until she arrives at the crossroads where she must make a choice that will have long lasting consequences. Gripping, entertaining, sensual, totally brilliant, Chloe Thurlow is a writer to watch.’ 5**** Review by President Brown at Amazon –
CLICK for Amazon
Photo shows Maggie Gyllenhaal and James Spader in the movie Secretary
The post Making Right Choices is the Key to Happiness appeared first on Erotic romance writer Chloe Thurlow.
